“Young people seem to view debt mostly in just positive terms rather than as a potential burden,” said Rachel Dwyer, lead author of the study and assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University.

While there is a law in place aimed at levying penalties for institutions whose two-year default rate exceeds 25 percent, Harkin contends that some schools have become good at manipulating their default statistics to make it appear that defaults occur in the third year or later.